Sunday Times sales slide again

The Sunday Times's third month with a £2 cover price saw circulation continue to fall.

The paper's sales were down nearly 100,000 copies year on year, 7.64%, to 1,212,886. This was a 5.87% slide from November.

On September 17, the biggest selling Sunday quality paper raised its cover price to £2, after already upping its cover price from £1.60 to £1.80 in February.

The effects were swiftly felt, with October marking the first time the News International paper had sold under 1.3m since September 1999.

The Sunday Times excluded Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve from its sales results, under rules agreed to by the Audit Bureau of Circulation allowing newspapers to set aside a certain number of days from their audits.

Sales of the Observer - owned by Guardian News & Media, which also owns MediaGuardian.co.uk - rose 5,449 copies, 1.27%, on December 2005 to sell 435,852, the best year-on-year result in the Sunday quality market.

The Sunday paper, which revamped in a smaller Berliner format in January 2006, saw sales fall 2.73% since November. Like the Sunday Times, it also excluded Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

In contrast the Sunday Telegraph, owned by the Telegraph Media Group, did not exclude any days in its circulation result. It saw its sales rise 0.21% compared with a year ago, to 643,592 copies, including an increase of 17,000 bulk copies since December 2005.

The Sunday Telegraph sale was down 1.95% on November, according to Audit Bureau of Circulation figures released today.

The Independent on Sunday, owned by Independent News & Media, had a bad result with its December sale of 198,871 copies down 9.21% on a year ago. It excluded New Year's Eve from its circulation result.

The paper, which boosted sales when it turned tabloid in October 2005, saw its sales slip 6.59% on November.

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